Powering up: the top MP tweeters

Craig Butt

WEST Australian senator Mathias Cormann may not be a household name, but he has more influence in the social media world than his Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott.

And although Kevin Rudd has nearly four times as many Twitter followers as Julia Gillard, the PM is the country's most influential MP on social media, according to Klout, a social media analytics company.

The San Francisco-based start-up assigns Twitter users a ''Klout'' score of between one and 100, using data on the frequency of updates, and how often they are talked about and retweeted. It also considers use of other social media networks such as Facebook.

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Our analysis of Australian politicians on Twitter reveals that almost one-third do not have accounts, including Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

Another non-tweeter, South Australian MP Rowan Ramsey, the member for Grey, said while he saw the appeal of being ''better connected to my younger constituency'', he was ambivalent about the social network: ''I do not want to tell people I'm trimming my toenails.''

But online government and social media advocate Craig Thomler said politicians tweeting about their daily activities was an important, if maligned, part of establishing a connection with their followers.

Queensland University of Technology associate professor Axel Bruns agreed. ''Some are talking generally with Twitter users - not necessarily about politics - and use it as a medium to portray themselves as normal people,'' Dr Bruns said.

He said some politicians had taken to using Twitter to spar with one another and members of the public about policy issues.

Mr Thomler nominated Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and Kate Lundy as standout Twitter users, and said ''the entire Greens team have been growing their effectiveness''.

He said Julia Gillard had, after a ''shaky start'', managed to find her ''rhythm'' on social media.

Of the 226 politicians in the House of Representatives and the Senate, 154 have what appear to be genuine, active Twitter accounts (there are also several fake accounts). Between them they have posted 167,928 tweets, amassing 2,388,166 followers.

Mr Rudd has the most Twitter followers - 1.17 million, which is nearly as many followers as the rest of the federal politicians on Twitter combined.

The median number of tweets per account was 389, although 30 politicians have tweeted fewer than 100 times and three have only sent out one tweet since signing up to the service.

''It's like someone told them they have to have a Twitter account, but [they] don't know how to use it,'' Dr Bruns said.

He said less-active politicians only used Twitter to retweet what their party's leaders were saying and to send out links to press releases. ''There's a very big gap between highly active politicians and those who are just there because someone told them to.''

On the flip side, the most prolific tweeter, parliamentary secretary for defence Mike Kelly, has sent out more than 11,000 tweets since signing up to the service in July 2010, and averages 12 tweets a day.

But Dr Bruns said follower counts and Klout scores were an imperfect way of measuring influence on Twitter. He said follower counts could be ''gamed'' by people buying fake followers and Klout lacked transparency about how its scores were determined.